Creative Placemaking
[Music]
my name is blair williams
and i am a creative placemaker
and i’m so excited to finally have a
name
to this thing that i’ve always been
doing this is a new relatively new field
if you will when it comes to a title
really the the term creative place
making is maybe three years old
but for many of us it’s what we’ve been
intrinsically doing in our communities
for centuries
and it’s nice to see that there’s
finally a movement behind it
so what is creative place making well
creative place making
is when members of a community come
together
and they use arts and cultural
strategies to enact
change and investment into a place or a
space
usually that change
is brought to a place or a space that we
might consider blighted
now here’s the part where my husband
last night said you’ve got to describe
blighted better
blighted is not a space that is falling
apart
that is necessarily economically
poverished that is
is uh lacking in water or roads
blighted districts can be someplace
that’s just not engaged
that doesn’t have that life force or
that energy that’s really
causing it to be a special and memorable
place that we want to visit
or go or use and that’s why
i enjoy creative place making i love
bringing that energy
not my energy but the authentic energy
of the people who are going to use that
space
and enact it and grow it and make it
change and make it special
for where they live so i want to give
you a couple of examples
of creative place making that i’ve been
a part of and that were really
fun and memorable but also really easy
and cheap the first one
when preparing for your speech you know
you have to have words that sort of help
you remind your sections remember your
sections or
your transition words and i got to
thinking as i was
teaching myself this section or
remembering it
the four words for me were chairs
music film and asking permission
now for those of you who know me well if
you see a few of you here in the
in the audience i don’t like asking
permission
and i even like asking forgiveness more
so
so i like to just go in and get stuff
done and
hope that it is meaningful that’s a
great part of creative placemaking so
back in 2008
i and some investor partners purchased a
building in downtown helena montana
i don’t know if you heard this but 2008
was not a great time to buy a piece of
real estate
and think that you would invest in it
and tr turn it into
let’s say livable space but we did so
why did i do this well i had done a
building
a few months earlier i’d taken on the
redevelopment of a project
and the truth is it was a building that
my husband and i would pass
for about seven years and every time we
would pass by it i would say
you know somebody otta you know that’s a
great space if somebody would just
and one day looking out the window of my
office at this
old brick building four stories high
in what would be considered a blighted
district
i called my husband and i said i think
we’re going to do that building
and he said do you have an account i
don’t know about
i said i think i can figure this out now
that particular project i’m not going to
talk about it became sort of my master’s
degree if you will in what to do and
what not to do
which isn’t always a good it’s always
good to have those projects
but because of the energy that i brought
to that district and through that
building
by the way i’m an arts administrator and
i owned a public relations firm
not a developer but the energy that i
was able to bring to that district and
began to see that district changed
created an opportunity wherein owners of
another building reached out to me and
said
we no longer want to own our space we’ve
been partners for a number of years we’d
like to move on
and we only want to hand it off to
somebody who has great energy
and great ideas and we think that you’re
the person
now again i work in the arts
and i am a public i worked in public
relations i didn’t have a lot of money
this was a four million dollar building
but lo and behold i was able to put it
together
but why did i take on this project
because it was in a blighted district
that was the part that excited me so
this was a
an area in downtown where they had
blocked off the street in the 1970s to
create a walking mall
hoping that it would create this
vibrancy and excitement
the problem is it didn’t because the
culture at that time was
driven no pun intended by their
automobiles and where they could pull
right up to and so this became a space
that people just traversed through
and could hardly wait to get to the next
place it wasn’t anything special
so a few days after we purchased the
building i began the process
of asset mapping which is my favorite
part of creative place making
and it’s when you go out and you
determine what are those things that we
already have
or what are those things that are at our
disposal that we can
instigate and cultivate and energize to
make this space
what it needs to be so i stood for a few
moments in front of the
building out on the walking wall and i
said we’ve got pocket parks they’re
already here
beautiful trees we even have a space
right next door to the building where a
building once stood but had burned down
and the city had invested in
redeveloping it into a stage
and a performance center but there were
never any performances there
because people didn’t know how to use
public space that’s a great part of
creative place making
is reminding people that they don’t have
to ask for permission
to use those public spaces we’ve all
invested in them
we’ve all created these places in these
spaces these sidewalks these
these are um parks these these open
areas but we don’t know how to engage
with them
and so using arts and cultural
programming skills and strategies i get
to bring those into these spaces and
figure out
how to to engage that energy
so i talked to you a little bit about
chairs music and film
those are the three strategies that we
used to
totally bring this district back to life
when we took it on 87 of the commercial
real estate on that block
sat empty
my first choice my first option or skill
we bought chairs adirondack chairs 30 of
them
every morning i’d have my husband and my
building manager drag those chairs out
and i said don’t put them just in front
of our building drag them all down the
block
and just put them into little gatherings
of twos and threes
for the first three days we began to see
people’s pace slowed
as they were walking through our
district of course they were looking at
the chairs like
who put that there and why should i sit
and i don’t know and who and where
that was okay you know it was quite the
fun social experiment by day
7 to 10 they were sitting in the chairs
they were
they were utilizing the chairs walking
their dogs and
taking a break but again still waiting
for somebody to tell them that they
weren’t supposed to sit there
that chair was just for looking at
by day 15 to 30 people
were clamoring for the chairs 11 o’clock
lunch
time they’d be running out to pull three
or four chairs together and to sit in
them and have their lunch
and look up and look at the architecture
that had been there for over 100 years
but they had never really taken a chance
to take it in
or to look at those pocket parks or to
look at that square
or to look at that empty storefront by
the second month we had people walking
into our office
and saying ah i hate to bother you but
i’ve always
wanted to open a knitting shop and i see
that there’s a space over there and
we were armed and ready we had the lists
of the
contact information for all the
landlords some of them even gave us keys
and we were giving tours
we had uh information from the sba or
bankers or the downtown association the
chamber whatever it would take
to get them energized to begin to invest
their energy their time their soul
their authenticity into this place
chairs
that’s all we used
the second was music twice only twice
did we pay musicians to play on this
walking wall
not on a saturday not on a sunday middle
of the week
people stopping to dance people starting
to look around bringing their blankets
to have their lunch in these pocket
parks and watch the music
why do i say that we only paid for it
twice because it only took twice and
then we had musicians coming to us and
again knocking on our door and saying
is it okay if i play music that’s your
space
play the music yeah but don’t i need a
permit or don’t they need to talk
no just play the music it’s not gonna
kill anybody
you know we started to see music pop up
more and more
the third way film we bought a cheap
projector
a blow up screen and we started offering
film in that little empty square
coffee shop right next door to the
square they used to close every day at
one o’clock why
because there was nothing going on then
in that district they started staying
open later
next thing you know they were staying
open until nine or ten o’clock because
we had our films and offering free
popcorn
they began to thrive by the end of our
first year
we’ve gone from 87 percent down to 13
percent
vacant retail spaces we shot we saw
knitting shops book stores coffee store
shops
galleries all of those things none of
them we curated
we let the community curate them for
themselves but we provided
the creative place making energy to
redesign that space
and how exciting and how many people
would come up to us and say
why are you doing this you don’t gain
anything
we all gain when we creatively place
make
right we all create a stronger more
connected community when we create those
gathering places that we can
share our ideas and our thoughts and our
dreams
and grow our community
did you know that last year
the investment made by the national
endowment for the arts
in our country returned a 60 billion
dollar economic impact
did you know that the idaho commission
on the arts has a two million dollar a
year
budget and last year that two million
dollars of investment
in our state had a return of 62 million
dollars
that’s a 31 return i mean come on
where are you going to get that right
and most of it was just energy and
excitement
and investment of people into place
the other example i want to tell you of
creative place making
was when i was young here in coeur
d’alene
and it was through my mother and it’s
where i really think i began to learn
this process so we had just moved back
to coeur d’alene
hayden really living in out by avondale
my father was an avid golfer and on the
board of directors for the
golf course at avondale and came home
one night and said to my mother
by the way we’ve taken over the
management of the club
and she said who’s we and
they needed to try to figure out a way
to get people to connect to that place
now that used to just be by the way a
little original log cabin
out there on the golf course and
neighbors moving in
but neighbors more and more
disconnecting from one another
and so on a day not unlike today with
the snow falling and deep
my mother called together people in our
district
who had skills or had resources or
assets remember asset mapping
to pull them together to create a
gathering place
for all of us to invest ourselves again
and meet one another the woman across
the street used to be an ice capade
she said jenny grab your skates meet me
down at the uh
lake you’re going to be at avondale lake
at noon you’re going to be teaching ice
skating
she called a couple down the fairway and
said i know you’ve taught your six kids
how to
cross-country ski grab all the cross
country skis meet me at the clubhouse
she called the woman down the lake who
made
homemade marshmallows she called the
gentleman who had a horse ranch but also
had a horse sleigh
and a guitar and had him come out by the
afternoon we had 85 families gathering
together and sharing these experiences
with one another
in this place that was about to close
down because nobody knew how to use it
and when they gathered and came together
they themselves began
to say to themselves you know it might
be nice if we had some weddings here
sometime or what if we did this
or what if we did that and they sat back
and let the space
expand upon its own that day is still
one of my most favorite childhood
memories
ice skating driving around in a
horse-drawn sleigh and singing songs
making homemade marshmallows
but most importantly gathering with
people
creative place making allows the
opportunity for us to gather
and for us to share and when we have
those shared experiences
we take them back into the veins of our
city
and we continue to expand upon the idea
of gathering together and sharing these
experiences not unlike this today
and that’s why creative placemaking is
so important to what we do
so i’m inviting you all to leave here
today
and to become a creative placemaker
yourself
asset map your neighborhood the district
that you work
your town and figure out how you can
make those places that you drive by or
see or encounter and you say to yourself
you know somebody otta
i’m challenging you all to otta
thank you